Research and Library

Access in Person or Online

Welcome to the Davies Family Research Library! We invite you to explore the world's largest collection of Oregon-related materials, including photographs, manuscripts, books, maps, oral histories, motion pictures, videotapes, newspapers, ephemera, and much more. All our resources are available to everyone.

Note that some library materials are stored off-site and must be ordered a week in advance. For information, please contact us at libreference@ohs.org or call 503-306-5240.

Library Online Catalog

OHS Digital Collections

High-resolution digital images, documents, and recordings of selected items and some entire collections are available for educational and research use on the OHS Digital Collections website. This is a new initiative of the OHS Research Library, intended to broaden public access to our extensive collections.

“As the person digitizing the Oregon Journal collection, I've handled literally thousands of images, but every so often, one really sticks with me. I never cease to be delighted that Mrs. George Loy's penetratingly skeptical gaze has been immortalized on film.

Decades later, the force of it remains undiminished. If you were thinking of bringing any nonsense her way, her face seems to say, you'd best think again.”

“Yoneko Dozono’s oral history tells a unique story. She was an American citizen, a Nisei, who grew up in Portland and then went to Japan as a teenager, where she spent the lead up and entirety of World War II, while her family was sent to the internment camps. After the war, she worked as a translator for the American troops. I find this glimpse into everyday life of the average woman in Japan during World War II fascinating.”

“There is a set of photos of the 1925-1926 Portland Rosebuds and there are several reasons why I think they’re great. First, I’m a sports uniform nerd, and these sweaters are exquisite. Second, before I moved hockey was a big part of my life, and these images got me curious about Portland’s hockey past. I had no idea that the Rosebuds competed for theStanley Cup and even more surprising I learned that the roster of this 1925-1926 team was sold to become the Chicago Black Hawks—one of the “Original Six” NHL Teams. Also Dick Irvin, pictured, went on to become one of the best hockey coaches ever, winning almost 700 games and four Stanley Cups with two franchises.”

“I like this photograph because it depicts the important participation and contributions of women in the early mountaineering movement in the Pacific Northwest. While we often think of early early climbers as men posing with alpenstocks and wool outfits, many of the early climbing expeditions in the late 1800s to peaks such as Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson (depicted here) included female climbers (who, by the way, often climbed in full skirts).”

“Oregon is a profoundly beautiful state. These photographs capture that well for me, and I like that these proofs capture the process of colorization of the prints. There are several examples in the collection of the same print recolored in different ways, sometimes creating dramatic differences in the scene.”

“I like the preliminary results of the 1857 election. I like this one because I remember when Elerina came across it, and we spent time researching it. Plus, it’s an example of how digital collections isn’t just images.”

“As a baseball geek especially when it comes to uniforms and logos I was very excited to see this image. This was my first opportunity to view a photograph of a player in a Portland Webfoots uniform and it did not disappoint with its silhouetted duck in profile. The subject of the photograph was most likely William Harris who was on the 1902 team. The Webfoots were the first professional baseball team to call Vaughn Street Park home.”

“The Kiser photos that were taken during the Lewis and Clark Expo of 1905 are some of my favorites. I have seen them in our collection before, but with the OHSDC, the images are scanned in at such a high resolution that you are able to experience so many fantastic details in these photos that I was never able to take in before they were made available in this format. Any of the shots of Portland’s “little Venice” just blow my mind as it is so hard to picture something like this in modern day NW Portland!”

“My favorite item is the first set of lecture notes by Herman Bohlman in Coll 542. The first three pages transport you not only to an early 20th century lecture hall filled with bird enthusiasts, but also into Herman Bohlman's basement, where he painstakingly hand colors glass lantern slides to illustrate his lectures, and into the close-knit world of wildlife conservation. Imagine Bohlman, armed with tiny brushes after a long day on the job as a plumber, attempting to bring to life his observations in the field. He has a mountain of slides to color, and who appears but internationally-acclaimed wildlife illustrator R. Bruce Horsfall? Shhh... Lights Out... it’s time for the show. #tinybrushes #missingdeadlines #famousvisitor #plumberbyday #artistbynight”

“I like this image from the Kiser collection. These sorts of hand-colored photos are cool; I selected this one because it’s an Oregon scene, even though some of the best ones are his Glacier National Park images.”

“As someone who has worked with a lot of historical documents, I always enjoy being able to connect to the past through someone’s sense of humor. Some jokes or stories lose their meaning outside of a very specific chronological context, but others like this one endure because they are charming, relatable, and vivid. I also like this particular story about Don Q. Quail because we always had a lot of quail around where I grew up and the idea of one being a happy pet and befriending a bunch of school children is too cute to bare. Finally, one of my favorite metaphors pictures a group of librarians as a covey of quail (that we are easily twitter pated, I think is the point) but that’s a story for another day.”

“I have many favorite images in the Finley collection, but this particular image is near and dear to my heart. It was likely taken on one of the first times that Irene joined William Finley in the field and is the start of a lifetime partnership in wildlife photography and conservation. Plus, who doesn’t love a woman out hauling camera equipment beside her future husband? All while in a skirt and heels.”

“I grew up in the Hood River Valley, and something about the contrast and clarity of this photograph captures the essential wildness of the landscape in a way that modern color photography sometimes doesn't. In the Northwest, so much of the landscape is so jaw-dropping that over time, the magnificent becomes familiar, and it's easy to look at the land without really seeing it. This photograph reminds me to look again.”

– Katie Mayer, Digital Project Archivist

Hood River and Mt. Hood. View from near Hood River Station
Carleton E. Watkins photographs Org. Lot 93 OrHi 21635

“Frances Emeline Grim (Geer) was one of the makers of the samplers that we featured in the sampler exhibit that was on view last year at OHS. Her sampler came across the Oregon Trail with her and her family. I love being able to put a face to the name (and trying to imagine her as a young girl)!”

“The Monteith family photographs are my vote as some of my favorites. They demonstrate how, in the face of severely deteriorated originals, OHS remains committed to and works hard to provide high-quality images to the public of the people who have contributed to Oregon’s dynamic history.”

Org Lot 1364 – Photographs of Vanport, Oregon
ca.1948

Photographs
taken by Dale Skovgaard and family around Vanport, before, during, and after
the flood. Includes one Oregonian photo. Photographs
were used in an OHQ Article authored by Dale Skovgaard in 2007 describing the
events of the flood.

By Kristi Turnquist, The Oregonian/OregonLive. Chapman Way and Maclain Way were finishing work on "The Battered Bastards of Baseball," their 2014 documentary about the Portland Mavericks baseball team, when an archivist at the Oregon Historical Society asked what they were doing next. The two weren't sure. As grandsons of Bing Russell, actor-turned-owner of the Portland Mavericks, it wasn't a stretch that the...

Oral history interview with Gertrude Glutsch Jensen, by Roberta Watts. Gertrude Jensen discusses her childhood in South Portland, her journalism career and, particularly, her life's work of activism in saving the Columbia River Gorge. Recorded December 7, 1977 - January 14, 1978.

The 1920s heralded the era of the Modern Woman, a more adventurous and independent type open to new possibilities. The new exhibit Mirror on the Modern Woman depicts some of these Modern Women, young and old, at work and at play. The exhibit features fifteen photographs from the 1920s and ’30s selected from the Oregon Historical Society Research Library’s collection of negatives from the Oregon Journal newspaper.

The Oregon Historical Society is lucky to have over 100 volunteers helping out in a variety of ways. Learning about Oregon history, developing new skills, and contributing to the community are all aspects of volunteering at OHS. Learn more to find out if you would be interested in volunteering with us!

Experience Oregon History

The Oregon Historical Society is dedicated to making Oregon's long, rich history visible and accessible to all. For more than a century, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state's collective memory, preserving a vast collection of artifacts, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platform, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon's history open and accessible to all. We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and rich as Oregon's cannot be contained within a single story or point of view.